Thread by @homemadeguitars

I got this very courteous DM today. In response I told this gentleman that I would write a thread. Here it is.

First I'm going to explain the objective point, and afterwards some thoughts on how to get there.
I have written an essay which gives an overview. It is on my blog, where there is no advertising and no tracking or data collection that I know of.
walkingpace.life/why-this-site/

3. All the things I recommend are available to humankind today with no lead time to build, no installation, little to no resource extraction, and no additional energy required to implement them.
They are, unfortunately, while easily doable, totally unthinkable.

4. The end goal is a world where all human activity is powered by what I refer to as "current energy," which is essentially the energy natural systems can harvest from the sun in any given region, annualized, used in that region.

5. The primary human activity in that society would be managing a person-sized or family sized piece of Earth to withdraw the maximum amount of CO2, embed it in the ecosystem, and obtain a comfortable life thereby. We would work to maximize diversity on all of Earth,

6. to minimize dead land to the absolute greatest of our ability, to create in each locale ecosystems based on the locale's "wild" ecosystem except managed with all our knowledge and scientific knowledge to produce the widest possible range of foodstuffs sufficient to support

7. Human and wild populations living in close proximity.
Overpopulation:
All the people on Earth are here today, and alive. We waste, according to UN IPCC, 25% of the food we produce globally. 20% of everybody is fat and sick, and 10% of everybody is starving.
Paraphrasing UN.

8. So obviously, at least in the short term, Earth can produce enough for 9 billion people, because it is.
Two billion of them extract resources vastly faster than Earth can survive.
That would be: us.
Under ideal management Earth's productivity would go up.
We're not doing that.

9. In this society speed of transportation would be limited by the ability of natural services to provide motive power.
The result would be localized production and consumption. Local cultures would have to fit the local ecosystem, local rainfall, local productivity.

10. The sole function of machines as we now use them is to replace the power of humans and animals with concentrated energy which can do the same job faster.
So: we have 9 billion people, and we are extracting concentrated energy from the global system to make them unnecessary.

11. And then saying, "But there's too many PEEPLE!"
Here's my position: I'm going to do all I can to think up a way for all of them to have productive work to do regenerating a healthy rich ecosystem wherever they are.
We are feeding corn to automobiles and soybeans to tractors,

12. And saying, "Whatta we gonna do with all these PEEPLE?"
OK, how to we get from here to there?

13. We slow down.
Actually, that's the second thing we have to do.
The first thing we have to do, is change the conversation.
The conversation is, How do we keep living *just like this* and stop climate change?
We don't. It's not possible. How we live is what's causing it.

14. "Will not have to give up quality of life to..."
In one sense that is true.
Here on my smallholding I have a fastly superior quality of life to the average urban or suburban American. Research proven mental health benefits. Vastly less toxic air. Less particulates.

15. Every person in the world today breathes poison with every breath, drinks poison with every sip, and we've done that on purpose and let advertising convince is it's a great trade-off.
It's not.
But I digress.
We need to have a conversation.

16. There is no serious scientist in the world who thinks we can cure climate change with emissions reductions only.
Not one.
They got nothin' else. All they're selling you is emissions reductions.
It won't work and they know it.
Call it what you want.
"Future tech."

17. Until serious recognized voices - people with high level credentials and access to media - start discussing the idea of slowing to zero emissions with all the other benefits we'd get.
Concrete is there so we can go fast.
That's it.
And concrete emissions are huge.

18. And the other function of concrete, besides making a surface you can go fast on, is to kill the surface of the Earth absolutely, to prevent even a trace of photosynthesis.
We should be tearing it up, not pouring more.
But that discussion is off limits. Of COURSE we need fast.

19. So, pretending (because it ain't gonna happen) that some Serious Climate Scientist says, "We need to slow down. All the way," and America thinks of it.
The organized, top-down way to do it would be with speed limits.
Reduce the speed limit 5 mph. A year. To a walk.

20. It's not intuitive, but the whole continent wide supply chain is based on high speed. The distance from houses to stores is based on speed. The requirement for four lane concrete highways is entirely for speed.
This would not be done in a vacuum - remember, society grew up.

21. We had a talk about our dying global ecosystem that wasn't based on products we could buy to fix it, but instead was based on what it requires. So we're slowing down.
You can't shop at a grocery store 15 miles away if the speed limit is 15 mph.

22. So while slowing, we would be building the intermediate supply nodes, aka local stores. But we wouldn't have to "build" them as much as "enable" them. The buildings are there.
The objective is to gradually slow to the point where we can transport our goods in horse carts,

23. Over paving stone lanes that the grass can grow up through, worms and bugs live under, rainwater soak through.
We would reintroduce beavers into every creek where they are native. To the extent beavers' activities conflicted with human preference, the beavers get the rights.

24. We could do the whole thing in 25 years. Kids would grow up in it and never know any different.
It might not work, but it might.
Nobody else's plan can make that claim without dragging in non-existent technology.
Gotta go.